War Crimes

Because Poets too must speak.

For the first time, I have recorded a voiceover for a Post. This one has taken too long.

This is a photo

of an incinerated

child, a mutilated

baby, or maybe

the bullet ridden body

of the Paramedics

sent to help them;

red lights

flashing in the night

only making an

Ambulance

an easier

Target.

And then the next.

And then the next.

This is the burnt out wreck

of the third, and final car in the

World Central Kitchen convoy,

to be hunted down and hit

with a Spike missile;

it’s occupants -

perversely -

cooked.

And White is the colour

of starvation, used

as a weapon of what

was never a war,

but a massacre -

daily.

White, a metaphor also

for cleansing;

emptying a land

one airstrike at a time -

the aching soil of Gaza

fertilised

with its own people.

But what colour compassion?

For the innocents of

Rafah, Khan Yunis, Jabalia?

And yes - the murdered and missing

of October 7th too;

they did not deserve this.

We are all of us captives.

When our Grandchildren

ask us what happened -

what did we do -

we cannot plead

ignorance.

We knew. We knew.